75 Prefab Floating Homes Form a Houseboat Town in Holland

“There goes the neighborhood!” has never had such a positive connotation, nor such a literal one. This mini-city-on-the-water development is drifting into place house by house to form a new kind of contemporary community on the water.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, as they say, but this new Venice by Dutch firm Rohmer virtually was, its constituent buildings pushed and pulled by barge and boat through locks and dams to their destinations.

Built on a series of basic modules, doors, windows and walls were flexibly inserted based on the needs of each individual home, while docks and ramps serve as impromptu streets and de facto sidewalks between buildings.

Upper decks afford views out over the water, while common buildings provide additional services and community spaces. All in all, a prefab neighborhood from start to finish, yet nothing like the manufactured American suburb. For Mieville fans: we are now one step closer to the forever-floating city of The Scar (via Inhabitat with photographs by Roos Aldershoff, Marcel van der Burg, Luuk Kramer.)